I thought the coffee was alright, MAYBE you could try a comment card next time?

It was a very, very good thing that we were moved out to the boonies (a.k.a. Scarborough, about 15 minutes out of Toronto proper) or else this might have been what we looked out the window and saw.

It makes me feel strangely conservative to be angry at the protesters who seemed to have no other goal than to smash property.  I don't have any lofty goals of owning property and becoming a bloated fool in a tight suit whose veins bulge at the thought, much less the sight, of something I own being damaged or destroyed.  It's just the senselessness of it - no capitalist system is going to be brought down by a few broken windows and balloons full of excrement, but it will annoy the piss out of those who are paid (in many cases, poorly) to clean up the mess.  It's like breaking someone's things at a house party, or the stupid kid (or adult with problems) that gets a DIY punk show shut down, or can't handle their own aggressive tendencies and ends up punching someone in the face (which only happened at the one show that I ever played in Chattanooga, TN).  Black Bloc, or slavery to hipster-approved "alternative media": it's all just garbage, a phase for some kids to pass through until they get hired by the same entities that they rail against, perhaps then writing something like this instead.  Maybe I'd feel differently if I wasn't stuck in the mortgage industry for three more weeks (as I'll be putting in my notice tomorrow) and was in a position to be in dialogue with others about it in another setting, but for now, it's another reminder that there's little room for subtlety to get any attention in the world, what with all of the screaming.  How do the quiet make their difference?

Utah Phillips once quoted Ammon Hennacy as saying "an anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do."  Maybe not, but this world is full of worthless people who rape, kill, torture animals, and lie (nothing like a nice catch-all at the end), and the police continue to exist because of those people.  Not every police officer is a Pinkerton descendant and not every protester is a saint, much less someone I'd like to have a drink with.  The news stories from the Toronto G20 lay bare just how complex the issues and reactions are, with no one side able to claim victory, but all able to come away dissatisfied - if they choose to.

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In lighter news (also known as "the time when Jen and I weren't watching CP24 in the hotel room watching the G20 protest inflammation"), we had a wonderful time in our newly adopted soon-to-be home, getting to know the neighborhoods and the GTA to the tune of 300 km of driving and a fair amount of walking (with plenty of the latter at the Toronto Zoo on our last day there, leaving the grounds just as the rain decided to fall).  I caught a break when I checked the hotel's Internet and found that my school was keeping the 2010-2011 the same as it had been for the year previous, but with no disbursement of loan funds, finding an apartment was not going to happen.  I'm hoping to get that from the school soon so that I can kill the visa and residence birds with one financial stone, since I want to have Jen's faith in the financial aid system coming through for me (since it did for her when she studied in London), but my past dealings with the INS in a prior career have my suspicions on alert, since we STILL need to get a quote from a moving company and need to throw a dart at the August calender to see when we should schedule the movers.

I feel like a bit of a sleepwalking zombie, wishing I was there already, but I have a number of people I still want to see before we leave, and I'm trying to cherish it.  I've already broken my eggs for the omelet and don't expect to make everyone happy, but I'll do my level best, and the sun will rise and set regardless.

(Hell, I may be singing like a schoolgirl just 24 hours from now, after I've quit my job and had some time to savor it... who knows?)

The curse of the blog: not posting

A full month has passed since my last entry, which might be the result of a few things:

- more time pressure at work, with purchase loans needing to close by June 30th to qualify for the Federal tax credit;
- burning out on over-thinking the move; or maybe just
- not being as stressed about the move.


I found out a week after booking the flight that we'll be there right in the midst of the G20 economic summit, with (probably not coincidentally) being bumped from our hotel downtown to one in the suburbs (but a bump up to a 3 1/2-star hotel, which will be nice) and very close to the Toronto Zoo.  It's the feeling of "hey, it's a big city, things like this are to be expected and worked around," not one of inconvenience.  Travel is all about being adaptable, and that'll be part and parcel of finding my way around anyhow, and if it's chaotic downtown with the expected protests and heightened police presence, it'll be a relief to get a better night's sleep than I might if all of that was happening almost right outside our window.


The thing I love about traveling is the random exploration; the thing I'm not liking as much about moving is not knowing where to live except for the twin goals of being near a subway stop and not being in a ground-level apartment for safety reasons. (Plus the other goal of not living in a far-flung suburb far from the city center - having the school some distance is enough.)  Anytime I chance to read something in a Twin Cities publication or see something advertised on television, I instantly have a mental map of where it is; I don't want to trust someone who's simply trying to rent a hard-to-rent unit in a part of town where there's no convenience store within walking distance to get a gallon of milk, or with poor public transit access that will make it hard for Jen to get to a job, or where it's simply not safe.  But, like so much with this whole experience, going with my gut has led me to the answers I've needed to find, and I'm confident that this will be no different.


There's so much wonder and hope to discover, and we'll begin discovering that in earnest in just ten days.